


a sweet team melting in your vice dreams

by austen



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/austen/pseuds/austen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beckett, Castle, and a little ice cream on a hot day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a sweet team melting in your vice dreams

It's an unusually hot June morning in Manhattan, and Castle's choosing today of all days to get creative on her.

Beckett, fanning herself with an empty manila folder, looks up just in time to see a dripping cone thrust into her face. On the other end stands Castle, halfway through what appears to be a double-scoop of mint chocolate chip and looking pretty damn pleased with himself.

"What the hell is this, Castle?" she asks, somewhat exasperatingly, leaning back in her seat in an attempt to sit in the path of the vacillating fan standing along the wall. The precinct's never had a decent air-conditioning system, and with the heat index the way it is, Beckett's starting to get a little warm.

"Well, it's _supposed_ to be a chocolate-vanilla twist," Castle explains, "but if you don't take it off my hands, it's going to drip all over..."

He tilts his head to study the open file on her desk.

"... _Baker, E_," he concludes, and starts to tilt the cone sideways. Beckett starts out of her chair, snatching it out of his hand before anything threatens to ruin her work, and her tongue darts out to catch the chocolatey drips as they start trailing down the cone into her palm. Castle briefly studies this development as he continues to make progress on his own ice cream.

"How long'd you have to wait in line for these?" she asks, curiosity winning over after the first few licks.

"I didn't," he explains, as she leans back against her desk. "Consider these from the Castle private stash. If having a teenaged girl in my home has taught me one thing, it's to have multiple flavors of ice cream on hand for those moments where the world feels like it's ending and all you want to do is devour an entire carton of _Ben &amp; Jerry's_."

"And you've _never_ had any of those moments, Castle?" Beckett grins around her cone, choosing to rotate it slowly during the licking process. Soon, her cone starts to form more of an organized point. Castle, on the other hand, bites into his without any regard for shape. She should've known that his childlike enthusiasm would also apply to this kind of activity.

"What happens between a man and his Coffee Heath Bar Crunch is no one's business but the parties involved," Castle declares, reaching out with his free hand towards her face. Beckett flinches, but then realizes he's moving to swipe the pad of his thumb along the corner of her mouth, where she's accidentally smeared the vanilla part of her twist.

"Guess I should've brought napkins," he adds, but his voice has taken on a different tone entirely, and she shifts restlessly along her desk, setting a few of her pens in motion. The sound of them hitting the floor snaps her out of it, and she bends down to pick them up while Castle bites into his cone, finishing it off as he sucks the sticky remnants off his fingertips.

"Guess so," Beckett answers stiffly, sticking the pens into the folder and jamming it shut. Without another word, she hands her half-eaten cone back to Castle.

"You sure you don't want _more_, Detective Beckett?" Castle asks, and she's almost afraid to meet his eyes, afraid of the look she might find in them. The desire to know wins out again, and when she does, his hand reaches up to let fingers slide around her hand instead of the cone itself. She draws in a quick breath, hoping he won't notice, but the smirk that comes over his mouth is a fair sign of his ever-prominent powers of observation.

"I'm full," she manages, and with a brief struggle of fingers, leaves the cone in his hand and returns to her chair.

Castle just shrugs and starts to finish where she's left off.

"Suit yourself," he says casually, sitting in the seat next to her desk, and takes one, long lick.

Beckett hides her face behind the file.


End file.
